Calvin Forrest Quate (December 7, 1923 – July 6, 2019) was one of the inventors of the atomic force microscope.
He was a professor emeritus of Applied Physics and Electrical Engineering at Stanford University.
In 1981, Quate read about a new type of microscope able to examine electrically conductive materials.
Together with Gerd Binnig and Christoph Gerber, he developed a related instrument that would work on non-conductive materials, including biological tissue, and the Atomic Force Microscope was born.
Binnig, Quate and Gerber were rewarded with the Kavli Prize in 2016 for developing the Atomic Force Microscope.